Here is some good news to the commuters. To overcome the cash crunch, the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) is distributing 15,000 Point of Sale (POS) machines in the State.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced scrapping of ₹ 1,000 and ₹ 500 notes in the country on November 8, the APSRTC suffered severe losses in the last one month as many passengers cancelled journeys due to cash crisis and non-availability of small notes.
The corporation terminated services in some routes due to a drastic fall in Occupancy Ratio (OR).
To overcome the situation, the RTC has decided to distribute POS machines to the conductors and arrange them at reservation counters across the State.
“As of now, 354 POS machines were arranged at different points and 50 were given to conductors in some routes. POS machines are generating ₹ 15 to ₹ 20 lakh revenue per day,” APSRTC Executive Director (Operations) G. Jaya Rao said.
The RTC had tied-up with the State Bank of India (SBI) and two other banks. Training was imparted to conductors in operating POS machines and the crew were successfully operating the machines in buses, the ED told The Hindu. “We are planning to issue POS machines to all conductors and provide them at bus stations and reservation counters to encourage cashless payments. Passengers can swipe their debit or credit cards to pay the fares online,” Mr. Jaya Rao said.
The corporation is operating 12,000 buses in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and other States and was covering 44 lakh kilometres every day.
As many as 65 lakh passengers are travelling in RTC buses per day, he said.
